“Only” 5 months. Most people got to 120 within the first 1-2 weeks. Virtually everybody but edge cases within the first month. At this point, most people have multiple alts at 120 with heroic+ raid level ivls. I personally have 8. I would have all 12 (I level/maintain 1 for each class) there, but I’ve been holding out to level new ARs when they come out.
The real issue is that Blizzard has stretched 8.1, 8.1.5, and 8.2 content out further than they should have, in an effort to retain subscriptions, instead of just making good, replayable content to begin with. Which has incidentally messed with the flight release schedule, since the tacit agreement is flying would be released when most of the major content has been released.
This is valid in the aspect that they’re stretched Uldir, for example, farther than necessary. However, it’s still only 5 months in. The amount of alts that someone has shouldn’t dictate whether or not flying is justified, or the amount of times they went through the content. I have two characters total at 120 due to the birth of my daughter at the beginning of the expansion making me miss a significant chunk of content at the beginning. There are people who are likely in similar boats to me. However, I do agree content is being dragged out longer than necessary with little to no replayability. But I could be saying that because I really hate Uldir.
I don’t know why people so desperately want to fly over everything. It’ll just speed up the journey so they can spend even more time bored and complaining about lack of content once they reach the destination… Plus utterly destroy WPvP, I hope I don’t have to unsub when they do eventually add it. Imagine having to fly over everything for the next 1.5 years. shudders
Well that’s a massive misinterpretation, lack of gamedev understanding, and failure of imagination.
I do recall them saying that the timing of flight being obtainable and the timing of a new “no-flight” zone was a bit off (they shouldn’t have happened at the same time). But I do not recall them ever saying they should have added flight sooner.
Flying is a bad mechanic that contributed to the devolution of a once great MMO into a series if unconnected and ultimately unsatisfying minigames. I hope it never comes back and they refund any gold you spent on your flying mounts.
That wont happen probably, but at least let us enjoy the game for a bit longer before they make it unfun again with flying.
Nonsense. Flying was added in BC when the game still had lots of growth yet to experience. What turned WoW into a series of minigames was when they removed the social aspect and started adding easy-modes of everything to keep the solo “I want to play an MMO but not with people” crowd happy.
If you want to point fingers at what killed WoW, start with the LFG tool and go from there.
I will agree that there should be a window for people who consume the content slower than others, but I respectfully disagree with it being this long. And I definitely disagree that alts shouldn’t be a factor. If we’re at a point where most people (even people in situations like you or similar) have max level alts) then we’re already past the point where people have consumed the content at least once.
Blizzard’s argument is that they design/balance the game around playing it on the ground. And we’ve done that. Repeatedly. And I don’t think it’s fair to widen that window to cover absolutely every single player edge case. It is unfair to make 99.9% of the player base sit around and wait for those 0.01% edge case players. Yeah, I’m pulling numbers out my bum, and there’s probably a fair bit of hyperbole here, but my anecdotal observations for myself and hearing/seeing from others over the years is about what I said initially - that most people ding to max level 1-2 weeks in, and by a month in, even most of the slow pokes have crossed the finish line with their first toon.
I would also like to remind that flying is also gated behind the pathfinder achievement. So even if there is someone showing up really late to the game, they still need to jump through that hoop.
And on that note… this is why people are even more frustrated. It’s not just the timegate. It’s the timegate + pathfinder that’s really rubbing salt into the wound.
Because pathfinder pretty much forces the player to consume all of the content already. And that’s Blizzard’s main argument right there: providing an experience tuned to the ground. Well completing pathfinder forces the player to go through all the story lines, get exalted in the faction reps, etc. - forces them to consume all the content.
For me, it’s because I’ve already done pretty much everything I care to do. On eight characters. It is just a boring, repeating grind. I barely even login anymore at this point. But I love exploring. When we finally get flying, I will be spending the next several weeks just flying everywhere, exploring all the little nuances of the land that I could not realistically do before, because of inability to reach certain points, or not being worth it due to mobs, etc. I love that stuff. And I guarantee you that’s several week’s worth of gaming out of me.
And yeah, I’d be lying if I denied it wouldn’t also be about more easily being able to suffer through the daily WQ grind.
But you know what I will also say… being able to fly might actually entice me to finally turn war mode on.
Yeah well, that’s just like, your opinion, man. Flying has been around since BC - the 2nd expansion. If you really believe flying is so bad, I’m sure you’ll be happy when Vanilla servers are opened and you can spend all your time there, instead.
I really don’t understand why you feel the need to impose your no-fly policy on others. All you have to do is not fly and your gameplay won’t be ruined, regardless of whether or not other people are flying. Why do you feel the need to impose your ideals onto others? This is bad, and you should feel bad.
Well to be fair you could only fly in sub areas within the zone, outside of the abyss. I mean you didn’t zone into Morheim and could instantly fly across the zone, it was limited to only a few sub areas.
I did read it. And I saw that you’d “fly everywhere”. And I’m sorry, but even the slowest explorers don’t take “several weeks” do do this (or maybe they do, if they do it 8 times). But then what?
No flight is the main reason I’m not subbed, along with a plethora of other bad design decisions that are running the players off.
And for me, the next raid tier might as well not exist, because I’m not going to play as a piece of trash horde and fight my own faction. What’s more, they’re going to artificially inflate the difficulty of heroics, so that’s more content I won’t do, alongside mythics. Not like gear is worth chasing anyway, since everything scales to your ilvl, so you aren’t actually getting stronger at all. AP is similarly worthless, since it is devalued every week and Azerite gear is one of the worst concepts in the history of RPG’s.
But all that aside . . .
No flying just speaks to the low quality of the game because it used to be that Blizzard could make expansions flight ready before they released. Now it takes them nearly a year after launch to finish that work, which is the main reason why we don’t have it: Cost-cutting.
It’s not about immersion, it’s about Blizzard desperately clinging to the players that want it who are slowly waking up to the fact that we will never be allowed to fly in current content ever again. Clinging to the few players left in a game that can’t attract new blood and can barely retain the ever dwindling number of veterans.
WoW is a lower quality game without flight, considerably less production value and that is absolutely a quantifiable fact. I’m past the point where I’m going to willingly pay a company for deliberate poor quality and poor entertainment value.